It is paramount that you create a well-planned and structured day for your inside sales teams. It ensures everyone knows what they should be doing and that new hires have a clear view on expectations.

Outlined below are two examples of how to structure your sales and enterprise business representative’s day. The cold calling activities outlined below include:

Following up on high priority website requests – for example a “contact us” or “request a quote”

Calling and emailing MQLs

Following up with event attendees

Making cold calls to non-MQLs – for example to invite them to an event

A word of advice, don’t stick to these to the letter, there are always variations in any given work day. Allow some freedom for your sales teams otherwise they will be unhappy.

Sales Representative – Daily Cold Calling Planning

Key things to analyze for cold calls are volumes, call duration and the nature of the outbound calls. This allows you to use the schedule as a recommendation rather than a strict template that has to be followed to the letter. It gives your SRs more freedom and a sense of responsibility for their own results.

With the schedule, your team has sufficient time to work through the required volume of MQLs and then examine those MQLs that are recycled to ensure the scoring criterion for leads is accurate and works effectively.

Here at NewVoiceMedia, in the last 12 months, by analyzing our cold calling criteria, we have increased the number of MQLs that make it through to our pipeline by over 50%. This has been invaluable and something we strive to improve each month.

Enterprise Business Representative – Daily Cold Calling Planning

It is a good idea to implement a similar EBR cold calling schedule for continuity through progression of SR to EBR. The same basic principles should apply. Remember, this is a recommendation and should be optimized through performance tracking. It can also be used as a tool to provide sales coaching where appropriate.

The EBR role is more targeted and focused on key accounts and activities. The cold calling activities in this schedule are often led by marketing campaigns with a particular focus on a set of specific accounts.

A key tip for your EBRs is to combine them into teams to so you can run multiple campaigns at once. This keeps their activities varied and provides a healthy element of competition too, helping to keep them motivated. Check out the chapter on gamification later in this guide for more information on how to introduce healthy competition and build best practice behaviors.

Cold Calling 2.0 – Cold Prospecting Emails

Your inside sales teams should structure their day to maximize calling efforts. They should also allow time for training and meetings, as well as cold prospecting emails. Detailed below are three types of emails with corresponding target audiences. Some emails target corporate executives while others are intended for department heads and managers.

These emails should form a part of your prospecting strategy, particularly when you are looking at targeting specific accounts and markets.

Basho Emails

Definition: Highly targeted, should take 15 minutes to write plus 30 minutes’ research of company. The aim is to seek referral to the right person in the company.

Audience: C-Level

Target type: Target accounts

Target Emails

Definition: From template with customized intro based on research on their website, google alerts, or news. Add relevant vertical references, too. The aim of this email is asking for conversations.

Audience: Direct reports of C-levels, Directors (UK), VPs or Head of (US), Managers

Target type: Target accounts

General Automated Email

Definition: Short email without a specific target. Contains relevant links in signature. It is asking for a referral to right person to speak to. Do not follow up general emails with a call unless they respond to the email and highlight who to talk to.

Audience: Direct reports of C-levels, Directors (UK), VPs or Head of (US), all new contacts – particularly from 3rd party data source

Target type: Cold accounts

Basho (or Haiku) is a form of structured Japanese poetry. A Basho email is a highly-structured email to a very specific person containing relevant information and a suggestion of why this should be useful to the recipient. The aim is for a referral to C-Level direct reports, issued from a C-Level target.

Target emails are less specific than Basho emails and are directed slightly lower down in the organization, asking for a conversation.

General automated emails ask for a referral to the right person to speak with and can be sent en-masse.

Avoid relying on one particular audience or tactic too heavily, and rotate between these methods on a rolling cycle.

Recommendation

Look at inviting your marketing department or your copy writers to help your sales teams improve their email writing and persuasive copy, particularly when it comes to subject lines.